Four Conflicts, One Continent: The Wars Reshaping Africa

Part of the series Struggles for Sovereignty

Four wars are reshaping Africa in 2026, and most readers outside the continent could not find them on a map. That is not a personal failing; it is the result of coverage that treats Africa as a single place of crisis rather than 54 nations with distinct histories. This series sets out to do two things at once: explain the conflicts, and teach the geography that makes them understandable.

The four conflicts stretch across the continent. In the Sahel, the dry belt south of the Sahara, military governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger fight armed jihadist movements after expelling French troops. In Sudan, in northeast Africa, two rival armies have produced the world's largest displacement crisis and famine. In Libya, on the Mediterranean coast, two rival governments divide the country and its oil. And in Mozambique, on the Indian Ocean coast of southeastern Africa, an insurgency in the northern province of Cabo Delgado has burned villages beside one of the largest natural gas projects on Earth.

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Map: Where the four conflicts are: the Sahel (Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger), Sudan, Libya and Mozambique’s Cabo Delgado province. Map by HistorianSpeaks.

Why These Four Belong Together

These are not four separate tragedies. They are linked by roads, rivers, gold, guns and people. Gold mined in Sudan and the Sahel pays for weapons. Weapons move through southern Libya toward Sudan. Migrants fleeing the Sahel and Sudan cross Libya toward Europe. Outside powers—Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, France, the United States, the European Union and Rwanda—appear in more than one theater.

The deeper link is history. Each conflict grows from borders drawn by European empires, economies built to export raw materials, and post-independence states that were often strongest in the capital and weakest at the edges. Yet that history is not only one of loss. Every one of these places also has a record of resistance, self-government and mutual aid that the war stories leave out.

The Two Stories We Will Tell

Every installment follows a standard of twoness: the military and political story told side by side with the human story. We will explain who is fighting, who is funding them and why. We will also follow the farmers, herders, fishing families, nurses, teachers, students, volunteers and refugees who live through these wars and organize to survive them.

Each piece answers three questions:

• Where is it, and how did it get here? The geography and history in plain terms.
• Who is fighting, and who is paying? The armed groups, their motives, and the foreign sponsors.
• What does it cost people, and how are they responding? Displacement, hunger and violence, and the civilian institutions holding communities together.

Sahel: After the Coups

Between 2020 and 2023, soldiers seized power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. Many citizens cheered, angry at a decade of insecurity despite French and UN missions. The juntas expelled French forces, ended the UN mission in Mali, left the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and formed the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). The question for readers: did sovereignty arrive, or did one foreign patron replace another? Read Part 2.

Sudan: Starved by Design

Sudan's 2019 revolution, led by students, doctors, women and neighborhood resistance committees, toppled a dictator. Four years later the generals who hijacked it turned on each other. Famine is now confirmed in parts of Darfur and Kordofan, and the Rapid Support Forces stand accused of genocide against the Masalit and other Black African communities. The question: why is hunger being used as a weapon, and who keeps the guns flowing? Read Part 3.

Libya: A Nation Divided

Fifteen years after the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that ended Muammar Qaddafi's 42-year rule, Libya has two governments, rival militias and an economy held hostage by oil shutdowns. Its south has become a corridor for weapons to Sudan and for Black African migrants who face detention, forced labor and trafficking. The question: what happens when a state is dismantled with no plan for what comes next? Read Part 4.

Mozambique: Gas Fields and Burned Villages

Mozambique won independence from Portugal in 1975 after a liberation war led by FRELIMO. Its far-north province, Cabo Delgado, stayed among its poorest even as tens of billions of dollars in offshore gas were discovered. Since 2017 an insurgency has displaced over a million people. Rwanda's army now guards the gas zone. The question: who benefits from Africa's resources, and who pays for protecting them? Read Part 5.

How to Read This Series

These conflicts are often described with words like "tribal," "ancient hatreds" or "failed states." We will avoid them, because they explain nothing and hide the decisions—by governments, companies and foreign powers—that drive violence. Africa is not defined by these wars. Our companion series on African industry, technology, mineral wealth and culture tells the other half of the continent's story.